In the meantime, hostilities were being carried on with the greatest ferocity by both factions. As Bannatyne reports, there was ‘nothing but hanging on either side.’ The chronicles and the correspondence of the time record, as common occurrences, the most cold-blooded atrocities. It is related in the Historie of King James the Sext, that a band of Queen’s soldiers from Edinburgh were attacked by a body of the King’s partisans, to whom they were obliged to surrender and give up their weapons. ‘But the horsemen of Leith, after they had received them as prisoners, slew fifteen of the most able and strong men of them; the remainder they drove to Leith like sheep, stabbing and dunting them with spears, where they were all hanged without further process.’ Randolph reported to Lord Hunsdon that nothing was left undone on either side that might annoy the other, that the Regent, to keep the Castilians from victuals, had placed men in Craigmillar, Redshawe, and Corstorphine, and had broken down all the mills to the number of thirty or more within four miles of Edinburgh, and that he had sent three hundred Highland men to the villages and cottages about the town to intercept and spoil all that attempted to repair to the Castle. Those of the other side made reprisals by hanging not only the prisoners whom they had received to mercy, but those who afterwards fell into their hands. Lord Hunsdon informed Elizabeth that four horsemen of the Castle having been taken in a skirmish, were immediately hanged; and that those of the Castle, for revenge, after dinner, hanged five of their opponents. When fuel was scarce in the town, the garrison of the Castle threw down several houses of the adverse faction, and sold the timber at an exorbitant price. They further appointed a functionary, nick-named by the populace the Captain of the Chimneys, to take account of such houses as had been abandoned by King’s men, and sell them by public auction. These stern proceedings so terrified the neutral citizens, that they fled to Leith; but instead of finding protection there they were driven back to the Capital, and threatened with the gibbet as spies. So strictly were supplies to the city prohibited that the country people who attempted to smuggle in provisions were barbarously put to death. Two men and one woman, from Wester Edmonstoune, were hanged for bringing leeks and salt to Edinburgh. Lethington, writing to Queen Mary, told her that when poor women hazarded, during the night, to bring in some victuals for themselves and their poor bairns, they were hanged without mercy.